Degrees of Latitude

Maps tell the story of how Europeans took possession of the New World
and exploited its bounty. From the outset, land and its location prefigured
the economic success of every colonization enterprise. The obvious way
to assert ownership over land and impose order on territories was by marking
boundaries on charts and globes. The lines delineated royal claims based
on discovery and exploration, the chartered possessions of companies of
private investors, and the personal holdings of the wealthy. Maps tell
us what the owners knew or believed about the land, suggest how explorers
traveled and traded, and record routes across oceans and continents.

Recognizing the roles of maps in the lives of American colonists, Colonial
Williamsburg early acquired examples to exhibit in its historic buildings
and, later, in its museums. More recent studies have refined what we know
about them.

Analyzing newspaper advertisements, custom orders for goods that affluent
provincials placed with London merchants, household inventories, and wills
provides insight about preferred geographic materials, how maps were displayed,
and the regard colonists had for them. The research focused on the inspiration
behind the production of maps, charts, and atlases; what they reveal about
the nation’s history; and what made them important to their owners.
The culmination is a book and a traveling exhibition, the book named Degrees
of Latitude: Mapping Colonial America and the exhibit Maps of
America from the Colonial Williamsburg Collection. Anna Glen Vietor
of New York City underwrote the volume, as well as acquisition of important
maps, in memory of her husband, Alexander Orr Vietor. The exhibition,
to open October 1, 2002, at the New York Historical Society, also commemorates
Colonial Williamsburg’s seventy-fifth anniversary.

The Degrees of Latitude efforts go beyond standard cartobibliographical
analysis to provide a cultural context for the manufacture and use of
objects that represented, functionally and symbolically, the expanding
worldview of the enlightened colonial elite. Where people chose to display
maps suggests their importance as utilitarian objects and symbols of social
and political aspirations. Maps often were specified for halls, generally
the most visible space in the home. An advertisement for Edward Moseley’s
map of North Carolina in a 1737 Virginia Gazette said it was
“a very large Map, (being Five Feet long, and Four Feet broad, on
Two Sheets of Elephant Paper) it’s not only Useful, but Ornamental,
for Gentlemens Halls, Parlours, or Stair-cases.” In such spaces
they prominently reflected the owner’s global interest and his familiarity
with such intellectual pursuits as geography, mathematics, and physics.

Patrick
Henry’s father, John, made the Virginia map that Lord
Botetourt hung in the Governor’s Palace dining room.
It may be that his excellency used its placement to show subtle
sympathy for the colonials.

- Tom Green

Maps were shown on dining room walls, as well. Graham
Hood, Colonial Williamsburg’s retired vice president for collections
and museums and Carlisle H. Humelsine Curator, believed the Governor’s
Palace dining room likely was “the intellectual center of the
house and the setting of cultural interaction between governor and
gentry.” In 1770, Lord Botetourt hung over its fireplace a new
map of Virginia drawn by John Henry. It is likely that he chose Henry’s
map for that space, rather than the better-regarded work of Joshua
Fry and Peter Jefferson, as a diplomatic show of support for the Virginians
during a time of mounting tension between the royal government and
its American colonies. A few years earlier, Henry’s son, Patrick,
had been the moving force behind the resolves against the Stamp Act.

The motives for the production of many of the early maps of America—for
example, to claim land—are as important as where and how colonists
used them. Several English colonies were formed from grants made by the
monarch to favorites. Maryland, for one, was established in 1632 after
Charles I ceded a large tract to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore. The success
of these colonies depended on the proprietor’s ability to attract
investors who would purchase parcels of real estate and supply laboring
settlers and tenants. Incentives were offered through promotional pamphlets
describing the richness and resources of the land and the potential for
economic success. To accompany his solicitation, Baltimore commissioned
a map, Noua Terræ-Mariæ tabula, to illustrate his grant. Early
maps such as this figured in the seemingly endless controversies over
boundaries. Careless wording of geographical limits in the charters, combined
with insufficient knowledge of the terrain, led to years of litigation
between Maryland and Pennsylvania, disputes not adequately resolved until
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon delivered their completed survey in 1768.

Maps also shaped economic development. The Chesapeake Bay and
its tributaries provided an internal system of transportation that
let planters send goods to market efficiently and conveniently.
The mouths of the rivers that flow into the bay are broad and free
of reefs, but they contain shoals and spits that challenged navigators.
Maps showed ship captains in these waters where to steer clear.

As the Middle Colonies expanded west, they still relied on these
water routes for trade. To avoid the high costs of freightage over
an inadequate road system, farmers in central Maryland and Pennsylvania
shipped produce to Baltimore by way of the Susquehanna River, which
empties into the Chesapeake, which leads to the Atlantic. Thus,
Baltimore became a major port by the 1750s.

In
1671, Lord Baltimore commissioned this map to help attract
investors and bring settlers and tenants to his new Maryland
colony. John Ogilby was the mapmaker.

- Hans Lorenz

Philadelphia merchants believed that the profit of Baltimore’s
commerce with western Pennsylvania, primarily its trade in grain, rightfully
belonged to them. To recoup the lost revenue, a group of Philadelphia
merchants began to study construction of a canal between the Chesapeake
and Delaware Bays—an efficient route from western Pennsylvania and
Maryland to Philadelphia via the Susquehanna. A Map of the Peninsula
Between Delaware &c Chesopeak Bays by John Churchman supported
proposals for the project. No attempt was made to construct a canal until
early in the next century, but it is apparent that Churchman used his
mapmaking skills to sway public opinion in its favor.

John
Churchman’s circa-1779 map supported merchants’
proposals to build a canal between the Chesapeake and Delaware
Bays.

- Hans Lorenz

By the middle of the eighteenth century, friction
between Great Britain and France over control of North America created
a need for maps to substantiate their positions. Published in 1755,
John Mitchell’s Map of the British and French Dominions
in North America with the Roads, Distances, Limits and Extent of
the Settlements is one of the most important cartographic efforts
of the 1700s. Mitchell carefully researched and depicted the boundaries
of Britain’s colonies as established by their charters, showing
that English claims overrode French encroachments beyond the mountains.

Control of the Ohio Valley was critical. The Ohio River gave the
French the only inland passage from Canada to the lower Mississippi.
The English feared that if the French were allowed to dominate that
territory, English settlements would be restricted to the seaboard.
Both countries began constructing forts in the area.

Maps were essential in planning campaigns during the war that followed.
On July 3, 1754, seven hundred French soldiers and three hundred fifty
Indians from present-day Pittsburgh, attacked Virginia militia colonel
George Washington’s post, Fort Necessity, at Great Meadows. Outnumbered,
Washington and his men surrendered, and he signed articles of capitulation
under which British captains Jacob Van Braam and Robert Stobo were taken
as captives to Fort Duquesne. During his imprisonment, Stobo studied the
layout of the outpost in detail. With the help of an Indian, he smuggled
out to Washington notes and a sketch suggesting how the British could
take the stronghold. Stobo’s Plan of Fort Le Quesne was
engraved and published in London the following year.

Maps also recorded battles. A Prospective Plan of the Battle
fought near Lake George by Samuel Blodget depicts Sir William
Johnson’s expedition to Fort Frederick on Lake Champlain.
It was the first engraving produced in the colonies that illustrated
an American battle plan.

En route to Fort Frederick, Johnson’s troops were ambushed
by the French, who had been forewarned of their approach. As the
English troops marched down the road, the hidden French fired on
them, as illustrated in a bird’s-eye view in the Plan.
Blodget wrote that the enemy “became invisible to
our Men, by Squatting below the under-growth of Shrubs,
and Brakes, or by concealing themselves behind the Trees.”
Suffering heavy losses, Johnson’s troops retreated and barricaded
themselves.

The
1755 “prospective plan” depicts the Battle of Lake
George, fought that year between French and Indian forces and
British and colonial troops.

- Hans Lorenz

Later that day, the French advanced to Lake George. The British knew that their
regular formations, “drawn up in Order, and beginning their Fire in Platoons,”
were ineffective on the frontier and “went into the Indian Way
of Fighting, squatting below the Shrubs, or placing themselves behind the Trees.”
The French approached and fired from three lines, also shown in the Plan.
As each line discharged, its soldiers moved to the rear. More than two hundred
sixty French soldiers were casualties. The British regarded it as a victory;
within four months of the battle, the Plan was advertised for sale
in American newspapers.

A plan of Fort Le Quesne, at present-day Pittsburgh. After
French and Indian forces from this fort defeated George Washington’s
militia in 1754, a prisoner from the battle supplied the mapmaker
with the details of its defenses.

- Hans Lorenz

Military maps were also propaganda tools. Carte de la Partie
de la Virginie depicts a dramatic, somewhat stylized version
of the French navy’s role in the American victory at Yorktown.
Designed for the French market, the map illustrates—and perhaps
enhances—the French fleet’s position at the mouth of
the Chesapeake.

On August 14, 1781, Washington, now commander-in-chief of the Continental
Army, got news that shaped strategy for the remainder of the Revolution.
French Admiral François Joseph Paul, comte de Grasse, had
left the West Indies for the Chesapeake with a fleet of twenty-eight
ships of the line, six frigates, and three thousand troops. To take
advantage of de Grasse’s support, Washington and his French
counterpart, Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau,
marched their combined armies almost five hundred miles to Virginia,
where General Lord Charles Cornwallis, commander of a British army,
had encamped at Yorktown. Washington and Rochambeau also persuaded
Admiral Jacques-Melchior Saint-Laurent, comte de Barras, commander
of the French fleet at Newport, Rhode Island, to sail to the Chesapeake
with French siege artillery and army supplies.

De Grasse reached the Chesapeake on August 26. Posting guard ships at
the mouths of the James and York Rivers to block supplies for Cornwallis,
de Grasse disembarked his troops and prepared transport ships to sail
up the bay to collect the allied army bound for Virginia’s Tidewater.
When the British navy stationed at New York, commanded by Rear Admiral
Thomas Graves, appeared at the Virginia Capes on September 5 to relieve
Cornwallis, de Grasse dispatched his warships. Although the battle lasted
less than three hours, the British fleet was heavily damaged. Six of Graves’s
nineteen ships were temporarily taken out of action. Meanwhile, Barras
slipped unnoticed into the Chesapeake with French siege artillery to pound
the English entrenched at Yorktown. On September 14, Graves gave up hope
of renewing the battle and ordered the British to return to New York.
His fleet is pictured in Carte de la Partie de la Virginie as
it prepared to sail. Cornwallis, as the map so clearly shows, was trapped.

The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and granted the
United States the land between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi
River, encouraging American expansion. A system for state mapping was
needed. Few state governments could fund the survey and publication of
maps of their counties and boundaries, so, with the exception of New York,
the first state maps were privately compiled and printed. By 1840, government
agencies and private companies were establishing mapping programs. Though
the accuracy of maps depicting the United States exceeded the previous
century’s, the cartography lacks much of the visual and psychological
appeal of the early renditions of America.

But as a body of historic documents, whether they trace the discovery
and settlement of the New World or its development, maps are tools for
understanding America’s past.

Margaret Pritchard is Colonial Williamsburg’s
curator of prints, maps, and wallpaper. Collaborating with Willie
Graham, she contributed to the winter 1995/96 journal “Rethinking
the Brush-Everard and George Wythe Houses.”